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Friday, November 14, 2014

Fridays at the Bank - Nostalgia

When life changes in increments it sometimes passes
unnoticed until that one day when you look about and wonder what happened. That
was my experience last Friday when I went to the bank and actually went inside
to make a deposit. That, in itself, was unusual. I mean, who goes inside a bank
anymore?

The ATM and I have
actually become so close over the years that I greet him/ her/ it with a hearty
“Hello Machine!” whenever I visit. I do the same in the Self-Checkout line at
the grocery. The grocery store machines have always spoken, while the ATM has
been mum in a dignified way. But, recently, even my ATM has acquired a voice;
which lends a whole new dimension to the relationship which is not unwelcome by
me.

So, here I was inside the bank on a Friday afternoon around
3 o’clock and suddenly it struck me. Aside from the one teller, there was
nobody there! And I mean there was not one single “customer” in the whole
place! I’m 60 years old, so naturally I remember the days before “automatic
deposit”, the means by which you are deprived of ever laying eyes upon your
hard earned money. This is a process by which your pay has become somewhat akin
to a rumor; the facts of which are heard, but the proof never actually seen.

As a man I found automatic deposit to go against the very
grain of my natural “hunter gatherer” instincts; by which I was able to “bring
home the bacon” each week in the form of the cash I had earned and lay it
triumphantly before my wife. Those days are gone; and along with it a life
which many women knew nothing about at the time. I’m talking about the world of
“wife free” cash.

“Wife free” cash was a commodity which consisted of various
means of converting assets; from grocery coupons to bonuses and even gas money;
to unaccountable cash. It was somewhat like Nixon’s slush fund; available to be
used at the sole discretion of the husband who was brave enough to procure it.
And there were quite a few of us. Witness a fully packed bank on a Friday
afternoon about 30 years ago.

Back then men never liked to wait in lines; we always tried
to fob that off on our spouses. DMV, bill paying etc. were always relegated to
the wives. We got away with it by letting them think we did this so that they
could feel more secure about the bills being paid on time etc. And some of that
was true. But it was all done in the name of credibility, while the reality was
that it also masked our pursuit of “wife free” money; and nowhere was that
pursuit more in evidence than on a Friday afternoon at the bank.

All the men in line had checks; some had more than one, the
second being an “expense” check for re-imbursement of any money the employee
had laid out during the previous week; some may have even had a bonus check
which their wives knew nothing about; and still others may have kept a few
bucks for gas which their bosses were actually paying them back for in that
expense check.

There’s no real point to this post; other than to call your
attention to a Friday ritual which has gone the way of all the other changes we
sometimes call progress.